So would you bring a hologram of a departed loved one to a simchah?

I reassured her: these mixed emotions are normal; somehow we manage. I spent my father’s 70th birthday party in floods of tears, six weeks after the stillbirth of my son. A hologram would have only emphasised the difficulty of the situation, and made us look morbid and strange.

Judaism helps us deal with loss and grief: no holograms required. When the bridegroom stamps on the glass, it recalls the destruction of the Temple - a symbol of devastation in the midst of happiness.

Everything that Shirel's father represented was with her under the chupah: in her heart, in her life, in her belief in love and the future.

We drink “to life”, in part so we are not tempted to dwell too much on death. Part of living is accepting life is not perfect: we cannot bring back the dead.

So do mention lost relatives - as my husband did at our wedding, speaking movingly about his father’s part in the Battle of Britain. Have their pictures in the wedding day slide show. Name your first child after them. But a ghostly hologram under the chupah? No thanks.

...but Karen Glaser has seen the light

Something I read last week will stay with me forever. A man whose baby died at ten months old used AI to create a hologram of what his beloved daughter would have looked like as an adult.

Readers were horrified. “Creepy and weird.” “No no no, absolutely not.” “So sorry for this father’s loss, but this is just…wrong.”

My reaction was different. If imagining his lost child as an adult brings this grief-stricken father comfort, who am I to judge?

I feel similarly about Shiral Mesika’s having her deceased father appear as an AI-generated hologram at her wedding. It brought her joy and comfort. That is what matters. It was her wedding day, not ours.

But I also understand the bride’s decision. We know the dead do not vanish cleanly from the lives of those left behind. This is why we share photos, mention the departed in speeches at our celebrations and, increasingly, set empty places for them at tables too. When you have lost someone dear, you want to feel they are with you at your special event.

Having a hologram of a beloved relative at your simcha is one step beyond gazing at their photograph or listening to a recording of their voice. All come from our deep-seated human desire not to defeat death, but to keep the conversation with the dead imperfectly alive.

And it is also fantastically on-brand for Israel, the start-up nation. This Jewish wedding clip went viral because it exemplifies human creativity.

The question now isn’t whether the departed remain with us, but in what form: memory, ritual, dream or algorithm. What once might have been dismissed as fantasy has arrived with the sheen of software and spectacle, blurring consolation with simulation. I rather like it. And, more to the point, so did the kallah.